The Gravity Well with Jenny Yeremiy

The Gravity Well podcast delves into complex ideas, making them accessible to all. In this episode, you hear Jenny and Alex dive into round two of their discussions, focusing on key players and relationships in Alberta, particularly in the context of environmental preservation and community engagement. They reflect on a recent meeting with the Big Hill Creek Preservation Society, highlighting the challenges of gravel pit extraction and the lack of regulatory hearings. The conversation then shifts to guest Mark McCormick, who introduces his Ever Living Meetings, a platform for deep, philosophical discussions aimed at resolving societal contradictions through speculative thought. Mark emphasizes the importance of coherence in beliefs and the need for a universal logic to address global crises. The episode explores the intersections of science, religion, and art, and the necessity of conflict acceptance for meaningful dialogue and collaboration.Welcome and RecapAlex:Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle. In the spirit of Reconcili-action, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities that share their knowledge to care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs. A healthy relationship with our homeland and each other is our guide.Jenny:Amazing. We have a document pinned at the top of this discussion outlining the beginning of round two. We are here starting round two of the Gravity Well Conversations. Today we are joined by Mark McCormick and I’ll do a good job of introducing you in a minute, Mark. But quickly, I’m just going to go over what we discussed last week. In this round of the conversations, we’re talking about who’s who in the zoo. We want to talk about who are the players that matter in our home in Alberta, the key relationships, what are the goals that each of us has. What are the gaps in our understanding of the goals and what are some alternatives to what we’re trying to do? Last week we met with actually a specific group, the Big Hill Creek Preservation Society concerning some gravel pit extraction that is happening despite much pushback from the neighbours and the preservation society itself in that area.And it’s a really good example of the powers in play and the decision-making that’s happening in real life. They discussed the regulators not providing hearings necessarily for people to be heard. If there isn’t a hearing, then there isn’t a court case and there isn’t an opportunity for stakeholders to express their concerns. The model that we have is this rock bridge model, and, of course, it’s a 3D model as well, but on one side of it, we’ve put the government and regulator on the other side of it. We’ve put stakeholders and the laws of the land. And we’re also trying to look at, like I said, the relationships and the structure around it. Where we started, we learned a bit last week about who are the players? Stakeholders, government regulators and institutions. And hopefully, we can get some more ideas from Mark on this as well if we have time in this conversation.And then those relationships, again, are they aligned or are they opposed? And how do we try to find some overarching goals that are shared between us and understand the competing objectives that we’re trying to satisfy in meeting those goals? And then we did talk a lot afterwards with the Polluter Pay Federation about expanding on these key relationships. We were talking about how beliefs come into play. We spoke a lot about religion and how it is playing out in places that are deeply impacted by decisions that are being made in the province, meaning that religion plays a big role in Alberta and that our belief system is being challenged by the changes that we’re seeing. And that is key to understanding in making sure that we can come together in conversation with people, the alternatives while we’re trying to, like I said, bridge those gaps, understand how we can get into collaboration and cooperation and communication with people that would otherwise have different beliefs or potentially have different objectives than us.Introduction to Mark McCormick and Ever Living MeetingsJenny:That’s the beginning of that framework. But we are joined by Mark McCormick and I’ve had the privilege of meeting Mark with one of our earlier guests, Melanie Hoffman introduced him to us. Mark is hosting meetings, they’re called Ever Living Meetings, and it’s based on a philosophy which I’ll let him get into around new world spirits. If you can elaborate on that, once I let you introduce yourself here, Mark, I’m going to offer my view of the meetings and their purpose and then we’ll let Alex offer his reflections as well. And then we’ll let you introduce yourself, Mark, and lead us off with the first, the why of what you’re doing, what you’re doing. My view is that the meetings are a way to get people to come into a conversation where immediately I feel an opportunity to ex

In this episode, you hear about the environmental concerns surrounding gravel pits in Bighill Creek, Alberta. Jerry Bietz from the Bighill Creek Preservation Society highlights the issues of water shortages and the impact of gravel extraction on the local ecosystem. The conversation delves into the broader implications of gravel mining, including the potential contamination of groundwater, the cumulative environmental impacts, and the need for better regulatory oversight.The discussion then shifts, the Polluter Pay Federation team touches on the challenges of administrative law, the role of government and regulatory bodies, and the importance of public engagement and education in environmental stewardship. The participants emphasize the need for a balanced approach to resource management that considers both economic benefits and environmental sustainability.Key takeaways include the importance of baseline data for monitoring environmental impacts, the need for more effective public representation in decision-making processes, and the role of education in fostering critical thinking and environmental awareness.Welcome and Updates for Gerry Bietz and the Polluter Pay FederationAlex:Welcome to The Gravity Well where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle. In our work and at play, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities to share their knowledge to care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs. A healthy relationship with our homeland and each other is our guide.Jenny:Excellent. I am just going to do a roll call. This is weird for us because we’re doing it on a different system today, but we have Gerry Bietz who is with the Big Hill Creek Preservation Society and we’re joined by the Polluter Pay Federation team: Mark Dorin, Regan Boychuk, Dwight Popowich, Vern Bretin, and myself, Jenny Yeremiy, and Alex McGillivray, of course, my cohost here. We are going to dive into our original discussion, which is around the who’s who in the zoo in Alberta. But first, we’ve got Gerry who’s here to talk about the issues that he’s seeing in terms of gravel pits in Big Hill Creek. I’ve been attending the watershed council meetings, been very concerned about water shortages, and originally started with the logging campaign, looking at the clear-cut logging that’s happening in the headwaters of the Highwood and realized that it’s a broader issue than that.Jenny:We’ve started looking at watersheds and I am now on the Bow River Basin Stewardship Committee of that. Being that I get to hear what all the watershed groups are doing, and now I’m trying to go to all the watershed meetings and learning a lot. Last week I was in sundry and heard about some gravel pit extraction and water usage by industry. That was quite alarming. I had just been to the Cochrane meeting, the Bow River Basin hosted in February, excuse me, and met with some members of Gerry’s group, the Bighill Creek Preservation Society, and they brought me the gravel pit concern to my attention. Here we are. We’re going to let Gerry expand on that. Alex and I have been meeting with a group that we’re going to have a meeting, or sorry, they will join us next week and they’re doing a strategy in meetings to try and make sure that meetings are actually more democratic and that the purpose of everybody, everybody’s perspective is brought in really well.Jenny:We’re going to use that system today. I’ve got three questions that I want us to use as we go around to help Gerry explain his issue and then we can give our perspective back to him on it. We’re going to test some stuff and this is flexing this learning muscle that we’re trying to do in these conversations too. Okay, That’s enough on the background and I did a bit of intros. Alex, do you have any reflections before we start that you want to offer?Alex:Looking into that whole Big Hill Creek Area and studying the topographical maps, there are some things that I’m interested in learning more about. I had no idea there were 86 active wells, 18 abandoned wells, and two active pump stations within that region. I was floored when I started looking at the maps. I’d like to know your views on things concerning the creek, the aquifers, and the surrounding environment. With that, I’d like to get started and hear what you have to say, sir.Gerry Bietz Explains the Importance of and Risks to Big Hill Springs, AlbertaGerry:Well, thank you. Let me give you an overview of who we are and what we’re doing. Big Hill Creek Preservation Society is a group of local people who’ve undertaken the long-term preservation of the Bighill Creek drainage, which is a unique area of Alberta. It’s unique in that it was created at the end of the last glaciation by a torrent of water over three or four weeks that flushed out all of the overlaying glacial till and gravel layers cut down through the bedrock into a deeply incised valley that is now primarily spring fed. The foundation of the health of the envir

This episode summarizes the first eight episodes of The Gravity Well. We discussed the importance of community collaboration, diverse perspectives, and proactive planning in addressing societal and environmental challenges. I emphasize the need for collective efforts and learning from past experiences, such as the Apollo missions, to anticipate and mitigate potential issues. Alex highlights the significance of understanding multiple viewpoints and bridging gaps to foster cooperation. Other speakers discuss the impact of stress and burnout, the necessity of good faith in media, and the critical role of emergency response systems. The dialogue also touches on the interconnectedness of human health, environmental sustainability, and the need for systemic change to address crises effectively. Overall, the discussion underscores the value of empathy, honesty, and shared responsibility in creating resilient communities and a sustainable future.Guests (Episode #): Angie Alexander, Melanie Richards (1); Brad Chapin, Michele Thomson (2); Regan Boychuk (3); Colin Smith (4); Chris Yeremiy, Mike Westwick (5); Ruben Nelson, Jim Campbell (6); Janet Pennington, Kristy Jackson, Melanie Hoffman, Mark Dorin (7), Walter Hossli (clip only), and Dixon Hammond (8). Get full access to The Gravity Well with Jenny Yeremiy at www.thegravitywell.net/subscribe

The Gravity Well podcast explores the importance of maintaining healthy relationships with our environment, focusing on water, air, land, and life. Dixon Hammond, a long-time advocate for the Beaver Creek Watershed, shares his experiences and efforts in improving water quality and riparian health. He emphasizes the importance of grassroots involvement, collaboration with various stakeholders, and the need for evidence-based approaches to manage water resources effectively. Dixon highlights the challenges faced during droughts, the significance of proper water licencing, and the role of education in fostering sustainable practices.The episode underscores the power of cooperation, the need for reeducation, especially among youth, and the importance of maintaining ecological health and stability. The hosts and guests advocate for continued dialogue and action to address environmental challenges and ensure a sustainable future.Welcome and Round 1 ReviewAlex:Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle in our work and at play, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities that share knowledge to care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs a healthy relationship with our homeland and each other’s is our guide.Jenny:That little opening has been evolving as we go. I’ve attached to this meeting a document that we’re using. This is the end of round one. We started our first discussions. The first round was talking about the broader why we’re talking. I’m just going to do a quick overview starting from last week and working my way backwards. Last week we spoke with Ryan Heavy Head. It was a tremendous conversation where we learned about Maslow’s visit with the Blackfoot First Nations and how this was before Maslow had created the hierarchy of needs which is the first system on mental health. Ryan explained to us that until that time they had talked about mental health disorders or conditions. But after Maslow visited with the Blackfoot, he started focusing on mental health. He learned a lot from staying with them about altruism and looking out for each other.He started forming his whole new concept of learning, which was carried forward throughout Western society or at least in North American society. Hi Janet. Thank you for joining us. Dixon. Just so you know, Janet is a collaborator of mine. We both volunteer and work with an organization called Alberta Talks together. Janet has an environmental background, and she and I have had the opportunity to work together. Janet, if at any time you want to ask some questions, feel free to just raise your hand in the bottom right corner and we’ll bring you up to do subjects and said he’d be open to that. That was last week. As I said, Maslow visited Blackfoot, but the key part I forgot in the original video we saw is that Ryan had also met with David Suzuki and Al Gore when they were explaining the uncomfortable truth and trying to help people understand what the climate crisis looked like, et cetera.He had a big breakthrough moment after that meeting, which was that the climate scientists and Al Gore and others are missing this key piece, which is this ongoing living relationship with the earth. And this is something that Ryan and I quite frankly believe is a really big key for us being able to overcome what we’re doing. And actually, it’s going to tie in a lot with what Dixon will offer us today in terms of honouring what the earth can give us and making sure we’re looking after it. Lastly, on this, I’ll just say we’re going to have future conversations with Ryan where we’re going to hear more about the Beaver bundle story, which is a really good example of the balance required with nature and making sure that we’re living in balance not only with our words but in our relationship and being humble in that we aren’t superior species or beings on this planet.Those are the key takeaways from that. And then I’ll just quickly back up the bus. The week before we spoke with Janet and others about what is the crisis. We let ourselves “choose our own crisis”. We described it and let each of us explain how we see the problems that we’re facing and what that looks like. We have this crisis of relationships and that need a collective vision of success that we can all get behind. I think that’s again, another reason why we’re talking with Dixon is because this is a person of action. We want to make sure we’re talking with people that we’re working with, trying to impart real impactful change. And then the week prior we spoke to my husband and one other Mike Westwick, who is in the Northwest Territories about wildland firefighting and city firefighting and essentially emergency response in general and trying to back up the bus and think more about emergency preparedness.Some people do this work for a living who just know it off the back of their, how can we let the general population learn from there in terms of

Welcome to “The Gravity Well,” where you break down complex ideas into manageable insights. Your mission is to seek wisdom from elders, individuals, and communities who care for our natural resources. In this episode, you hear about the importance of community, the role of leadership, and the need for grassroots activism in addressing social, environmental, and economic crises. Key topics include the failure of current leadership to engage with the public, the necessity of returning to the rule of law, and the potential of models like Donut Economics to guide us towards a sustainable future. Join us as we explore how to foster humility, accountability, and community care in our efforts to create positive change.Recap and Welcome to Janet, Kristy and Melanie (and later, Mark)Alex:Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle in our work and at play, we seek wisdom and elder well. We seek the wisdom of elders, excuse me, individuals and communities that share their knowledge and care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs. Caring for our homeland is our guide.Jenny:Thank you, Alex. Welcome Melanie. Welcome, Janet. This is a really exciting day for me to have. As I’ve told Melanie, when we first met back in March of last year, really felt at home when I met Melanie and was introduced to the Alberta Talks and AEN team. Janet is someone that I’ve had the opportunity to volunteer with a few, oh geez, at least a handful of times now. And always grateful to hear your insights and see your support in social media and in that space of trying to, as Melanie highlighted, address the concerns that our government is not sharing with the public and potentially some barriers as well. That is what we want to do, make sure that we are touching on the real world, things that are happening, excuse me, right here in Alberta where we live.But I’m going to back up the bus a little bit and give you two, a little bit of insights as to where we’ve gone over the last five weeks. And then I’ll let Alex do the same, and then we’ll go ahead and do our round table of questions with you, and allow you an opportunity to introduce yourselves Properly as well. Just quickly, I’ve attached a file at the top of this meeting, and that is sort of the running tally of what we’re learning as we go. In our first week, we discussed why we are doing the gravity well, that we want to rebuild community and bring people together in crisis and do that in little buckets at a time. We understand that we have heavy issues that people are facing, and we want to make sure that we have fit-in “bite-sized pieces that anyone can manage” as the goal.That’s our goal. And then we talked about our agreement. We spoke with our positive intelligence coaches. I meet weekly with some coaches. Thursday morning, which is nice leading into these conversations to be kind of grounded in that. They helped us come to we need a community agreement. We ask that this is a space for respectful listening and exchange of ideas in the best interest of the public and our planet. And that’s of everyone involved. Anyone in the chat or on the stage, the tools of this room, there is an opportunity, if you hold down your phone, you can do some emojis. It helps the conversation move along if somebody, perhaps we can’t hear each other, whatever, something, if something’s running too long, you can do a little gif and offer a funny way of just helping us come back together.We think this is a call to action. That’s one thing. Melanie’s asked some amazing questions as we’ve gone along through this process, rooting us in what are we trying to do. For us, the big thing that we see this room being is a space to help people take responsibility for themselves. We’re not here to hold responsibility for the issue. Let me give an example. We had a conversation recently with a friend, Brad Chapin. He spoke to us about behavioral health and safety, and I had a close friend afterwards mention that she didn’t learn anything. There was nothing offered at that time. She didn’t get the answer. She was after I said to her, well, as a matter of fact, we’re going to read Brad’s book and we’re going to do it in Angie’s room and walk through what we learn.I said to her, you’re going to have to be okay with this being a learning process for me as well. It’s this understanding that we can’t know all of the answers to things. And what I liked about Colin Smith’s comments in our meeting with him is that anybody who’s telling you that they know all the answers is probably not understanding the problem to the degree that it is, myself included, right? I learn every day a little bit more. Anyway, that’s a bit of stage. We did our community agreement. I’m going to try and be quicker with these other ones. I talked about Brad a little bit. We talked about our fears. That was the reason why we met with Brad because we appreciate that this is an understanding that

The Gravity Well podcast delves into the complexities of global crises, emphasizing the importance of understanding and addressing ecological, social, and economic challenges. In this episode, Jenny holds an in-person interview with Ruben Nelson, alongside Jim Campbell, to discuss the concept of a “poly crisis” and the need for a collective approach to problem-solving. Nelson highlights the historical context of modernity, the limitations of current leadership, and the necessity of deep, relational thinking to navigate the impending collapse of modern industrial society. The conversation underscores the urgency of fostering humility, deep learning, and innovative strategies to mitigate the impacts of these crises and lay the groundwork for a sustainable future.Welcome and RecapJenny:Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets that anyone can handle in our work and at play, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities that share their knowledge to care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs. Caring for our homeland is our guide. I have Ruben Nelson with me and Jim Campbell, courtesy of Jim Campbell,A friend of mine from the AWA that I’m really grateful to have. We’re chatting with Ruben today about, this week’s topic is “Choose your own crisis”. We’re trying to make sure we make space for people to, in whatever place they are in their understanding of the crisis that we face in the world, we’re allowing people to bring forward, how do they see the crisis and how do they define it? That’s really the focus of these conversations today. I’m hoping that we have an opportunity to meet with Ruben in an official capacity at another time where it’s not so noisy, but we’re going to try this out and see how it goes. Really appreciate you making time for me. Let’s start with some introductions. Ruben, would you mind just introducing yourself for the audience?Ruben:I’m Ruben Nelson. I was born in Calgary in 1939. Calgary was an overgrown agricultural service center. The oil and gas business wasn’t, it was here, but not important enough to make a difference. Grew up in Calgary as a straight arrow. The United Church of Canada, the 18th Scout troop. For those who know scouting, that means something. They’re an exceptional group and they kept lots of virgins like myself off the streets and out of trouble. Ran off to Queens because I wanted to go to university where nobody knew me, and in those days, nobody from Calgary, almost nobody from Calgary went. There were nine of us on the campus in all faculties in all years from Calgary. I succeeded in that sense, got my foot caught in the door, spent 10 of 11 years there, and I got an education that wasn’t advertised in the calendar.I’ll make this very quick and then I’ll stop because it set up my life that was nothing in the calendar. That said, if you come to Queens and if you hang around long enough, and if you’re just bright enough to attract a little bit of attention from some of the better faculty, which of course all faculty give brighter students more time and attention, perfectly normal human response, then we will give you the kind of education that you’ll be able to understand human history in new ways, including the crises of our modern industrial culture. That wasn’t in the calendar, but it’s what happened to me. I went and did an undergraduate degree in philosophy and political theory, an honours degree, and then I worked on a master’s degree in philosophy and a theology degree at the same time because the college, the theological college and the university were then legally separate institutions, both had charters from Queen Victoria and since everybody on campus knew me, including the principals of both places, they agreed to just ignore the fact I was registered in the other institution.Jenny:Amazing. Cool.Ruben:It gave me ocular vision as an undergraduate, thinking about big picture issues, thinking about the future. I organized what may have been the first form of futures conference in Canada in 1960. Eisenhower was still president, Diefenbaker was prime minister here. That got me thinking about the future, and I’ve just stayed in that. I mean, I’ve tried to design my life so that intellectually and emotionally I could have all the comforts that I had at Queens with people to talk to who are interested in doing serious work.Jenny:Amazing. Wow. Yeah. It sounds like you’ve been a systems thinker from a very young age. I feel you. I also consider myself to be one who’s a big picture thinker and it is a bit of a play as well. Jim, do you mind taking a moment just in detail for us?Jim:Sure. I’m Jim Campbell. I’ve been here in Alberta since 1977, came out here to work with young offenders and have had what I call a checkered career since then. But the common theme for me has been community, whether it’s been the arts, environment, or education, and what I like to think I specialize in is making connections

In this episode of The Gravity Well you hear the importance of community, leadership, and emergency response. Hosts Alex and Jenny, along with guests Mike Westwick and Chris Yeremiy, discuss the significance of mentorship, pre-planning, and effective communication in managing crises. You hear emphasize the need for a structured incident command system, the value of honesty and empathy in public communications, and the importance of training and retaining skilled emergency responders. The conversation also highlights the challenges posed by natural disasters, such as wildfires and water shortages, and the critical role of community engagement and preparedness in mitigating these emergencies. Like and subscribe! Hosted by Jenny Yeremiy, The Gravity Well delves into complex issues to foster understanding and improve the world, from Treaty Seven and Southern Alberta, in Canada.Background information: the Northwest Territories had a historic wildfire season in 2023. “On June 7, there were eleven active wildfires in the Northwest Territories. At that point, there had been 21 total fires had affected 403,815 hectares (997,850 acres). By August 15, there were over 230 wildfires throughout the territory. By August 17, they were within 17 km (11 mi) of the capital city, Yellowknife, leading to an evacuation order. The wildfires caused telecommunication and internet signals to be cut off throughout the South Slave Region, which led to concerns about the feasibility of a safe evacuation.” – Wikipedia. The NWT fires amounted to nearly 30 per cent of the historically horrendous 2023 Canadian wildfire season, a season in which wildfire destruction was more than six times the long-term average of 7,000,000 acres.Welcome and Introductions to Mike Westwick and Chris YeremiyAlex:Welcome to The Gravity Well where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle. In our work and at play, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities that share our knowledge to care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs. Caring for our homeland is our guide.Jenny:Awesome. Thank you so much, Alex. Welcome to The Gravity Well, I’m just going to add in the chat an update of what we’ve been up to, I’ll just get that link in there. So we started this conversation, these conversations, excuse me, about four weeks ago. In our first conversation, we talked about why we’re doing this. Alex and I see an opportunity to bring people together. Again, we have a lot of fractured relationships in the community and trying to rebuild the community in crisis. And so we spent the first week going through our community agreement with, actually Angie Alexander is one of the people in the audience. So Angie and I do a room together on this app. Thursday mornings. Angie hosts it, and so it’s a group of positive intelligence-minded, or sage leadership, I should say that Angie’s brand, idea is to try and stay calm and rational in crisis in terms of building leadership in teams.That’s the focus of that work, but we’ve been using that framework to help build our community agreement and try to make sure that we’re working in a place where we open the dialogue to differences of opinion and allow people to a shared understanding. So we wrote this community agreement, we’re looking for engagement from our community to help us build off of that, but we’re trying to seek common ground. We want to make sure we have a round table chat. I’ll just show you that if you hold down on your photo, you can do an emoji. So it helps sort of move the conversation along or communicate and yeah, we just want to make sure that we hold perspectives and stay open to other people’s input. So that was our first week. Then we went into some behavioral health and safety education. The reason is that as I’m sure, well, I know certainly Chris, I know Mike, you mentioned you weren’t on the front lines, but Chris certainly works.He’s an emergency responder, a city firefighter, and was a wildland firefighter for years before. So Chris is good at being prepared in an emergency. This is the next opportunity that we saw in having this discussion is to help people understand, first of all how to overcome our fears so that this behavioral health and safety aspect, understanding that we have a fight or flight system that helps manage our stress and just being able to see when that’s happening in this community and help us come back to a place where we can be thoughtful, rational, and our best selves. So that was our second week. Then we went on to Sourcing the News. Again, understanding that people are struggling and being able to find news that they trust, information that they trust. And so we spoke with Reagan Boychuk, a good friend of mine, and Mark and I work with Regan closely.What he helped us come to is that we need to be objective with all new sources. We need to understand that media is a centralized process and it works in the best interest of corporations and s

In this episode, you explore the interconnectedness of our planet’s ecological systems and the urgent need for a shift towards an ecological-based economy. Colin Smith, of Land Lovers, highlights the nine planetary boundaries that define the limits within which humanity can safely operate, emphasizing the critical state of our environment due to human activities. Our conversation delves into the concept of bio-regions, advocating for a localized approach to resource management and community resilience. By fostering a shared identity, equitable resource allocation, and inclusive decision-making, you and your community can navigate the poly-crisis. Welcome to The Gravity Well, where you break down complex ideas into manageable insights. Join us as we seek wisdom from diverse perspectives and work towards a sustainable and regenerative future.Welcome and RecapAlex:Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle. In our work and at play, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities that share their knowledge and care for our water, air, land, life and resource needs caring for our homeland will be our guide.Jenny:Well, that sounded extra smooth today. Nice work.Alex:I just slowed down.Jenny:Yeah, thank you for being here, Colin. We’ll get to your introduction. We’re just going to take a few minutes and go through a little bit of what we’ve been working on in the last few weeks. I’ll go first. We started, as I said a few weeks ago, our first discussion, in which there’s a pin in the episode, at the top you can see what I’m referring to. We spoke with our positive intelligence network. Colin, I’ve worked with some coaches every week over the last year or so. We sought their advice in starting that. We set the intention of making sure that we are operating in a space of allows people to bring in different perspectives and be respectful at the same time.I’m not going to go through the details of our community agreement today, but we’ve got that available on our social media so that people can weigh in. We want to know from people, does this community agreement sit well with you? Then the next week we spoke with a psychologist, his name is Brad Chapin, and the reason why we spoke with him was about overcoming fears. One of our concerns in this discussion is that we have to help people get past certain fears in terms of the overwhelming nature of being in a polycrisis if you will. We’re trying to make sure that people feel, number one, that they understand that we have a regulation system, we have a system in place that helps us stay calm and to tap into that and to also understand when we’re in fight or flight.That’s a simple way of discussing those fight, flight, freeze or fawn-type places we can go to. And we are faced with fears, with things, say a challenge or something that feels like a threat. Again, just trying to get in this space where we can identify what our triggers are, and Alex and I have been working on that together. When we speak, we try and use a common language now so that we can help understand where each other is coming from. I’ll give an example, I said yesterday to Alex, our PQ coaches would say, or in that framework. We identify our saboteurs in that framework, and my top saboteur is control. Alex and I were having a great conversation yesterday and then I was saying something that was making, I could see he was frustrated with me and I said, I think my controller is coming out here.I was able to point to something of myself so that we could look at it and go, what am I doing that’s not working right? Anyway, that’s the next week. Then last week I wanted to just touch quickly on our discussion with Regan Boychuk. We met with Regan because we wanted to talk about how we source good news and not good news, let’s say, “How do we source quality news?” We did this great exercise with Regan where we walked through an organization called Media Lens. And their understanding of what they offer is that we have to recognize that media has a centralization process and it means that it works in the best interest of corporations and special interests. It’s not in the best interest of people and the public. We have to look at news and news information objectively.Jenny:And the piece that sat with me from Regan is that to me it’s two things, and then I’ll open up to Alex for some of his is number one, we want to see supporting evidence. When I’m looking at this document I shared in the chat and looking at the last line, which is “How do we know how to source news?” To me, it’s two things. It’s looking for that supporting evidence. Science-based information that’s been informed by many, many different experts, not just one, let’s say. And then also that its objectives are for the greater good. Regan described it as operating in good faith. I’m looking for information that it has supporting data and that it’s operating in the best interest of the

In this episode, Regan Boychuk and Mark Dorin discuss the critical role of media in shaping public perception and the importance of discerning trustworthy news sources. We explore the systemic biases in mainstream media, particularly in the context of Alberta’s oil and gas industry, and how these biases impact public understanding and policy. Our guest, Regan Boychuk, an independent researcher with extensive experience in political science and journalism, shares his insights on media analysis and the importance of good faith in journalism. The need for independent research and the role of alternative media in providing accurate and unbiased information is discussed.Introduction to Regan Boychuk and Oil and Gas LiabilitiesAlex:Welcome to The Gravity Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle in our work and at play. We seek the wisdom of the elders, individuals, and communities that share our knowledge and care for our water, air, land, life, and resource needs. Caring for our homeland will be our guide.Jenny:Awesome. Thank you, Alex. Okay, we’ll start with an update on what we’ve been doing. A couple of weeks ago, Alex and I did episode one of The Gravity Well, where we talked about why we’re doing this. We see that people are in crisis. Either it’s a social crisis, having health issues or a belonging issue, or they’re feeling they’ve been displaced because there’s flooding in their community or a fire, things like that. Or financially just pinched and not feeling safe, let’s say because you’re financially stressed. We’re trying to be a place for people in that space. We took a course together. Alex and I took a complex decision-making course. It was a five-week course, but it helped us have a framework to have discussions so that we could have at least a similar style to a topic.It’s easier for people to take in small bits of heavy information and be able to say, okay, that was okay. Right? Build like a muscle. The idea is that we want people to learn how to use these skills. When I think about news how we intake information and how we know what is for our benefit when we read something, how do we know that it is serving us not only today, but in the long run that it’s a good thing to be doing? How do we know that? And it’s difficult right now. Regan and I have been working together since last spring, and we met online on Twitter. I saw, well, actually to be fair, I saw you talk on Ryan Jasper’s show Real Talk, and I was like, oh my God, I need to speak to this person because we have a very similar understanding of the liability problem in Alberta.Jenny:Liability, the oil and gas sites that need to be cleaned up in our province. There are only so many people who understand the problem because it’s one of those things that it’s like Fight Club. We don’t want to talk about liability. Nobody talks about liability. It’s one of these things that’s not talked about, but it’s a massive problem. Regan has been working on this for years, and I don’t want to go too far down that path, but that is to say that we will be talking to Regan a lot throughout the year. This conversation is to help me understand the research you’ve done along with this and how long you’ve been at it, we’ll get you to start there. Help us know that amount of effort, already. And then we’ll just walk through some questions about how you look to information and help decipher [the truth]. And we’re going to share how we do it too as we speak so that there’s a flavour of how I break down the same challenge, how I would do it or things like that. I think you understand, right? Does that work?Regan:Yeah, sure. My name’s Regan Boychuk. I’m an independent researcher. I have a graduate degree in political science and have been studying Alberta’s oil patch for 20 years. I went to journalism school. That’s when I started to get, I didn’t go to university straight out of high school. I wasn’t interested, but when I started reading newspapers and getting more interested in things. That’s how I started by reading the newspaper, learning about current events and then trying to make sense of them. And that leads me further astray to longer, to magazines, to books, et cetera, trying to make sense of events, but always had a strong base in journalism, been reading a lot of newspapers for a lot of years on a daily basis, and that sort of basic filtering that might be kind of the foundation of all of my research on whatever the topic is, just that wide-ranging, constant reading. And it wasn’t that strange in 1998 when I started studying journalism at sat in Calgary, but today I don’t know anyone, I don’t have any friends. I don’t know anyone who reads the paper, let alone reads a bunch of newspapers carefully. I’m at a bit of a loss for how folks these days get their information.I started during the 2007 Royalty Review in Alberta, I started working with the Parkline Institute, volunteering analysis and data, trying to make sense

Welcome and Introduction to Brad ChapinJenny:Here. Thank you so much. Okay, Alex, why don’t you take us away, please?Alex:Hi, my name’s Alex. Welcome to The Gravity. Well, where we break down heavy ideas into small buckets anyone can handle in our work and at play, we seek the wisdom of elders, individuals, and communities that share our knowledge to care for our water, air, land, life, and resource needs. Caring for our homeland will be our guide.Jenny:Thank you for that introduction, Alex. Thank you everyone for joining us. Really appreciate you being here. Hi Michele. Thank you so much for being here. I am excited about this conversation today. Just going to take a moment though to reflect on last week. Angie and Merrill, thank you so much for being here. We had a great conversation. We spoke about why we’re doing The Gravity Well. We spoke about our mission statement, then we talked through what we see. Hi Dion. Thank you for joining us. We talked through how we want to handle problems that come up in conversations. We wanted to work through our method, the method that Alex and I took in this complex decision-making course, which helps us work through the six W approach to all of the problems we want to talk about in this room. Both Angie and Melanie helped us talk through building a community agreement, making sure that we have space for people to offer suggestions, and making sure that we’re using the tools in this room.Brad, for your information, if you hold down on your image, you can do things like add emojis or images or things like that to help kickstart, just show support of a comment or anything like that. Awesome. Great job. We’re just going to use the tools in the room. There is a chat in the bottom left feature as well. Hi Merrill, thank you so much for being such a great supporter. and for being here. We’re going to use those tools to help us work through these conversations. And if we have any challenges, we’re going to look to our community and to our rules to make sure that we stay on course. This particular conversation has been a long time coming, not necessarily for Brad, but certainly for me. I met a woman that is from Calgary and she offered me her story.Her name is Mary. She’s a mutual friend of Brad and I’s. And Mary grew up in Ontario. She moved to Alberta and had an accident on her bike almost immediately after moving to Alberta. And that accident put her life on a different course. One of the things that it meant for her was that she could no longer afford to drive or ride her bike because she was hurt. She took the bus and while using transit, ended up getting, she had, what ended up being, a stalker for quite some years, or certainly a significant amount of time. And the threats that this person put on her caused her tremendous PTSD. Mary was suffering from PTSD and started to get suicidal thoughts from that experience. And she thankfully wasn’t successful in that, but was because she was struggling with this for so long and she decided that she was going to just research and understand what she was going through.She researched, and Brad, you can help me expand upon this story if you know it differently. She researched for years, or at least for a significant amount of time, and found Brad and Brad’s work. What Mary described from learning from Brad is that she was able to see what was happening to her in real-time, like physically. She said, that she remembers Brad walking through a diagram, which I’m going to share with you once I stop talking here. I’ll put a link in this chat so you guys can see the images that Brad presented to share for us to walk through today, but that his work changed her life and she feels that this work is vital in terms of helping people work through their fears and helping them shape a healthy life and make sure that we each have the tools to look after ourselves. That’s what Brad’s work is trying to do. I’ll stop there. Brad, if you please unmute yourself and just introduce yourself a little bit and what you’re hoping to bring to the conversation today, as well? Thank you.About Brad Chapin and his behavioral health/self-regulation workBrad:Yeah, thank you Jenny for that introduction. Thank you for telling Mary’s story. I work with a lot of people from all over the United States and other countries too, but Mary’s story sort of sticks with you and we’ve stayed in contact for a number of years and she’s just been such an advocate, just a passionate advocate for mental health. And just also I think one of the things I’ve gotten from her, and it really pushes a person like that, pushes professionals to do work better too. She’s a motivator for me, but just to hear a person with lived experience and how the system is difficult for them to navigate and get where they need to be and how can we do things better for people who are looking for ways to help themselves. That’s really where I’ve spent the 20-some years of my career in the applied setting. I

Welcome to “The Gravity Well,” a podcast where hosts Alexander MacGillivray and Jenny Yeremiy tackle heavy ideas in manageable segments. They aim to provide information, ideas, and skills to positively contribute to listeners’ lives. The podcast was born from a conversation during an election campaign, where the hosts realized the importance of preparing for potential negative outcomes, much like the Apollo missions. They emphasize the need for community rebuilding and fostering a collaborative mindset rather than opposition. The hosts discuss the importance of respectful behavior, understanding different perspectives, and creating a safe space for open dialogue. They also explore their own personality traits and how these influence their collaboration. The podcast aims to address various crises by opening dialogues and encouraging contributions from diverse viewpoints.About Your HostsI, Jenny Yeremiy, am a geophysicist and liability (oil and gas site clean-up and restoration) expert turned social and environmental economic activist.Alexander MacGillivray studied Arts, is a jack-of-all-trades, an independent researcher and has a passion for bringing people together to learn and communicate big ideas.In this first episode of The Gravity Well, I draw learning and inspiration from two thought leadership branding coaches trained in Positive Intelligence — Angie Alexander and Melanie Richards. Angie and Melanie share their recommendations for defining the ground rules of The Gravity Well community.I have known Angie since our time at Apache Canada. Angie and I never worked directly together, but peripherally, she has been a steady ally in the roller coaster of our oil and gas careers. She and I had lengthy careers in oil and gas development, Angie as a reservoir engineer and me as a geophysicist. Geophysicists like me work with geologists to identify drilling locations and abandonment recommendations. Reservoir engineers like Angie work hand in hand with a production engineer to determine the economics and producibility of a well or oil field.Angie and I have identified shortcomings in the executive leadership style — a traditional “command and control” approach that does not allow for debate. Angie became a coach to leaders to support their transformation to Sage Leadership, her coaching brand is based on the Positive Intelligence training system created by Shirzad Chamine.In the fall of 2022, Angie could see I was struggling with putting myself in public view. We met for coffee and she invited me to her weekly conversation. Have a listen to my first conversation in Angie’s Clubhouse Room. I was hooked the moment I joined Angie’s room as a regular, Thursday morning, 8 AM MST in Clubhouse. Thank you, Angie and my fellow Sage Leaders!About The Gravity Well Podcast Season OneAlex and I agreed all issues in Alberta are on the table and couldn’t decide where to start. We agreed to take the DelftX Creative Problem-Solving and decision-making course to create a structure and flow to the conversations. Have a listen to the season one program outline here.Welcome and Introduction to The Gravity WellAlex:Welcome to The Gravity Well, what we’re trying to do is tackle heavy ideas in small buckets that anyone can handle. My name is Alexander MacGillivray. Jenny and I have joined forces to bring you information, ideas, and skills with the goal of positively contributing to your insights.Jenny:Thank you, Alex. As you said, thank you, Angie, for noticing that we have the welcome message in our chat. We included that for everyone. Alex and I have spent the last four months working together. He and I met at the doors, it’s, I’ll be clear, the doors means, well, during the election when I ran in the election this year, last year, I door knocked. I had the opportunity to knock on Alex’s door, and I had been messaging consistently before and leading up to it that we were in the Apollo 13 moment that we needed. This province needs to put all of its resources on the table and have a discussion about how we’re going to do all the things we want to do. That was my message for months.Jenny:And people would hear it and say something interesting about it. But it wasn’t until I started talking to Alex that he said, yeah, but why Apollo 13 was successful? It was because of Apollo 11, and what he meant, I said, “Go on.” Alex said that it’s just like if you follow Michael Phelps, they anticipated negative outcomes and made plans to adjust based on those potential outcomes. For example, if we ran out of oxygen, what would we do? If, we were feeling a pressure change, how would we adjust if we were off trajectory, how would we fix direction? And because they took the time to do that because they took the time to learn what-if scenarios, they were ready when Apollo 13, they were faced with the Apollo 13 moment. That’s the opportunity I saw when I first reached out to when I first met Alex.Jenny:It was, “Wow, this is someone that just added a who